At Infosys, Panaya gets space for growth

Panaya is currently exploring areas in the traditional information technology (IT) services sector that can be disrupted by heavy levels of automation.Anirban Sen | ET Bureau | Updated: February 29, 2016, 09:18 IST

Panaya, an Israel-based automation technology firm that Infosys acquired last year, is building a new lineup of products and tools to make automation for large customers more efficient and cost-effective even as India's second-largest software exporter invests to strengthen its R&D.

"At Panaya, we are building new products -Infosys invests plenty of money to increase the Panaya R&D team and research lab," Mati Cohen, chief technology officer at Panaya, told ET in an interview. "They are giving us space and autonomy to do so, which is great," he said.

Cohen, a former IBM executive, said the company's integration with Infosys was yet to be completed and will take some more time.

Panaya is currently exploring areas in the traditional information technology (IT) services sector that can be disrupted by heavy levels of automation.

"You cannot continue building services, with no software and automation around it. Margins will drop and the revenue will drop, because others will build automation capabilities," said Cohen.

"We are looking at services, not just from the point of view of Infosys, but from the point of view of the market, to see the new areas of labour-intensive work that we now need to automate."

Top companies such as Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys have, over the past few years, started investing in automation, amid increasing pressure from top outsourcing customers such as Citigroup and General Electric to do more with less, as they increasingly opt for pay-per-use billing models with the shift towards the cloud.

One of the new products that Panaya is building will automate testing and another for automation of ERP software.